Tyrannicide

Encyclopedia : T : TY : TYR : Tyrannicide

Tyrannicide, literally means the killing of a tyrant.

Typically, the term is taken to mean the killing or assassination of tyrants for the common good. The term tyrannicide does not apply to tyrants killed in battle or killed by an enemy in an armed conflict. It is rarely applied when a tyrant is killed by a person acting for selfish reasons, such as to take power for themselves. Sometimes, the term is restricted to killings undertaken by people who are actually subject to the tyrant. The term is also used to denote those who actually commit the act of killing a king: ie, Harmodius and Aristogeiton are called 'the tyrannicides'.

Not all overthrowings of tyrants involve tyrannicide because the tyrant might either be killed in battle, kill themselves, or they may be deposed. Also the use of the term "tyrannicide" is subjective since it requires that the user of the term considers the person murdered to have been a tyrant, either in the sense of being cruel or having seized power illegally.

Examples of tyrannicide include those of:

Hipparchus (527 BC-514 BC), son of Peisistratus; Hipparchus was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the original tyrannicides.
Julius Caesar assassinated by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.
In fiction, the murder of Macbeth by Macduff can be considered tyrannicide.
John Wilkes Booth considered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to be tyrannicide.
The legendary tyrannicide by William Tell, particularly as dramatized in Schiller's play, served as a prototype in the political discourse of the revolutions of 1848, and for the numerous attempted assassinations of Adolf Hitler (see Widerstand).

Tyrannicide

See also